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Roles of Disgust Propensity and Need for Cognition in Moral Dilemma Utilitarianism The University of Melbourne Words: 2198
Abstract Consequentially equivalent moral dilemmas (MDs) have been found to elicit different responses. The dual process model (DPM)suggests utilitarian responses (which emphasise maximising total good)are generated by deliberative reasoning, anddeontological responses (which emphasise inviolable rights)are produced by emotional and intuitive processes, triggered by negative affect(Greene, Morelli, Lowenberg, Nystrom, & Cohen, 2008).Thecurrent study extends this model by examining the role of disgust propensity (DP) and need for cognition (NFC) in MD responses. Two MDswere presented to 596 participants assessed for NFC and DP using verified scales.Participants rated the acceptability (UA) of saving five people by causing serious harm to an otherwise unthreatened personeither (i) intentionally, through direct physical force; or (ii) incidentally, by diverting a trolley.Pearson’s correlation analysis showed a significant negative correlation between DP and UA on dilemmas requiring intentional harm,r(594) = -.10, p= .02.No other significant associations were found.Limitations including a heavily gender biased sample and failure to properly operationalise deliberative strategies for MDs may have affected results. The finding that DP predicts decreased UA in MDs requiring intentional harm supports recent literature suggesting individual differences in negative affect propensitypredict MD responses.
Roles of Disgust Propensity and Need for Cognitionin Moral Dilemma Utilitarianism Morality guides individuals and societies in their efforts to shape the world. Yet there is debate within the field of moral psychology as to whether intuitive and emotional processor rational processes primarily drive moral judgment (Haidt, 2001; c.f. Kohlberg, 1987). A rational judgment involves multiple steps, in conscious and controllable effort to reach a judgment (Haidt, 2001). An intuitive judgement is effortless and automatic; there is no awareness of weighing facts or rules (Haidt, 2001). Greene’s dual process model (DPM) suggests that both systems influence moral judgement, producing characteristic responses that conflict in moral dilemmas (Greene, Morelli, Lowenberg, Nystrom, & Cohen, 2008; Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley, & Cohen, 2004;Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001). Moral dilemmas (MDs) pose hypothetical scenarios asking participants to choose (or evaluate) an action with moral consequences (Greene et al., 2001). Utilitarian responses (URs) emphasise maximising utility (usually measured as the satisfaction of preferences), whiledeontological responses (DRs) emphasise inviolable rights as constraints on action (such as “do not kill an innocent”; Greene et al., 2001). Neurological evidence suggests URs are linked to greater recruitment of deliberative processing areas; and DRs to greater recruitment of emotional processing areas (Greene et al., 2004). Further, response times for URs increase with incidental cognitive load, indicating a deliberative process reliant on cognitive resources (Greene et al., 2008). DRs are unaffected, suggesting an intuitive process that operates independently of cognitive resources or conscious reasoning (Greene et al., 2008).Considering this evidenceGreene suggests a DPM,with intuitive processes producing DR and deliberative processes producing UR (Greene et al., 2004). In MDs, the two processes are in conflict, with the balance affected by: the properties of the stimulus, situational variation, and individual differences (Green et al., 2008). This conflict is highlighted in differing responses to personal moral dilemmas (PMDs) and impersonal moral dilemmas (IMDs). A PMD asks participants to deliberately create a threat of serious harm to a particular person or group of persons; deflecting an existing threat such that it incidentally harms someone is insufficient. All other dilemmas are IMDs (Greene et al., 2001). While the dilemmas are consequentially equivalent, IMDs consistently elicit greater URs than PMDs (Greene et al., 2001). Greene et al. (2001) suggest that the direct, intentional harm in PMDs elicits a greater negative affect than the indirect, incidental harm in IMDs, favouringintuitively generated DRs (Greene et al., 2001). Disgust is a negative affect that may be an evolutionary adaptation against ingesting noxious substances (Rozin, Haidt, & McCauley, 2000). Disgust is elicited by PMDs (Choe & Min, 2011) and, less strongly, by IMDs (Horne & Powell, 2016; Pletti, et al., 2016).It is negatively correlated with URs (Szekely&Miu, 2015; Pletti, Lotto, Tasso, &Sarlo, 2016).Disgust propensity (DP) is a stable trait, reflecting the frequency one feels disgust (Olatunji, Cisler, Deacon, Connolly, &Lohr, 2007). It should predict more frequent disgust responses to MDs (Choe & Min, 2011). DPM theory suggests that increasing the likelihood of disgust responses shouldincrease the likelihood of intuitively generated DRs (Greene et al., 2004). Choe and Min (2011) found trait disgustis negatively correlated with UR for PMDs. They did not examine IMDs. The literature indicates DP should negative correlate with URs across MDs, but this has not yet been investigated. Need for cognition (NFC) conceptualises the trait of enjoying and engaging in effortful deliberation (Cacioppo, Petty, & Kao, 1984).DPM suggests that, as URs are the product of deliberative processes, a tendency toward deliberative engagementshould increase the likelihood of URs to MDs (Greene et al., 2008; Greene et al., 2004; Paxton & Greene, 2010).However, attempts to demonstrate this link empirically have been inconclusive. Bartels (2008) failed to find a significant correlation between NFC and UR when testing standard MDs. Conway andGawronski (2013) found weaker than expected positive correlation. Finally, Kahane et al.(2012) found a positive correlation, but tested only sixteen participants. Further investigation of the link between NFC and UR is required. This study aimed to investigate how individual differences in NFC and DP relate to responses to IMD and PMD. Participants ranked the acceptability (UA) of saving five by killing a man, either (i) intentionally, by pushing him into a trolley (a PMD), or (ii) incidentally, by diverting the trolley (a IMD).We hypothesized that DP would be negatively correlated with UA scoresfor (i) the PMD, and (ii) the IMD; and thatNFC would be positively correlated with UA scores for (i) the PMD, and (ii) the IMD. MethodParticipantsParticipants were 596 University of Melbourne students (151 males, 445 females), aged between 18 and 68 (M = 22.42; SD = 6.41), who participated in the study as part of a laboratory class activity. No course credit or payment was provided. Materials A computer questionnaire was used to assess all variables.DP was assessed using an 8-item sub-scale of the Disgust Propensity and Sensitivity Scale – Revised, measuring the frequency one experiences disgust (Olatunji et al., 2007). Participants responded to items (“I feel repulsed”)by rating on a 5-point scale (1 = never; 5 = always). NFC was assessed using the 18-item shortNeed for Cognition Scale (NSC; Cacioppo et al., 1984). Participants responded to both positively-worded (“I would prefer complex to simple problems”) and negatively-worded (“thinking is not my idea of fun”) items by rating on a 9-point scale (-4 = strongly disagree; 0 = neither agree nor disagree;4 = strongly agree). TheIMD was adapted from Foot’s (1967) bystander dilemma. The stimulus informed participants “[a] runaway trolley is heading down the tracks toward five workmen who will be killed if the trolley proceeds on its present course. You are standing next to the track on which the trolley is traveling, but you are too far away from the workmen to warn them of the impending danger.” Next to participants is a switch to divert the trolley. The stimulus asked “How morally acceptable is diverting the trolley and killing the lone workman to save the five workmen?” The PMD, adapted from Thompson’s (1985) footbridge dilemma, is identicalexcept participants stand next to a “very large stranger who is minding his own business.” The PMD asked “How morally acceptable is pushing this stranger onto the tracks to save the five workmen?” Participants rated UAfor each scenario on a 6-point scale (1 = absolutely unacceptable; 6 = absolutely acceptable). ProcedureParticipants completed the computer questionnaire individually and anonymously during laboratory classes at different times across one week. Scales were presented in order of description above. ResultsParticipants’ scores for each trait were obtained by taking the mean across the relevant scale (negatively-worded NCS items were reverse-coded when calculating NFC scores). Descriptive statistics were generated for each variable(Table 1). Table 1
Descriptive statistics fordisgust propensity, need for cognition, and utilitarian acceptability for the impersonal and personal moral dilemmas.
Two-tailed Pearson’s correlation analyses were performed to identify the association between individual differences (DP and NFC) and UA for the PMD and IMD. A significant negative correlation was found between DP and UA for the PMD, r(594) = -.10, p = .02. No significant association was found between DP and UA for the IMD,r(594)= -.04, p = .31. No significant association was found between NFC and UA for the IMD, r(594) = .06, p = .12, or the PMD,r(594) = .08, p = .06. Discussion The present study investigated whether two traits (DP and NFC) were associated with and utilitarian responses to PMDs and IMDs. We hypothesized that DP would be negatively correlated with UA for (i) the PMD, and (ii) the IMD; and that NFC would be positively correlated with higher UA for (i) the PMD, and (ii) the IMD. Our findings supported only one hypothesis:a significant negative relationship was found between DP and UA on the PMD. Thesignificant negative correlationfound between DP and UA on the PMDis consistent with previous studies (Choe & Min, 2011) and with DPM (Greene et al., 2004; Greene et al., 2001).This finding indicates that propensity to experience disgust predicts reduced acceptance of URs to the footbridge dilemma.DP has been found to predict increased disgust reactions to moral dilemmas (Choe & Min, 2011). While correlation analysis cannot support a causal pathway, DPM theory suggeststhese disgust reactions drive emotionally triggered intuitive processing, increasing DRs (Greene et al., 2004; Greene et al., 2001). While we found a small effect size, many factors affect reactions to PMDs (Green et al., 2001). No single factor is likely to be strongly predictive. DPM, and our findings, still contribute to our understanding of moral judgment. The hypothesis that DP would be negatively correlated with UA on IMDs was not supported.Previous studies indicate IMDs elicit less disgust, less emotional processing, and less URs than PMDs (Greene et al., 2001; Horne & Powell, 2016; Pletti et al., 2016). MDs combining personal force (direct application of physical force generated by muscles) and authorship (intention) have been found to produce the greatest emotional reactions and DRs (Greene et al., 2009). The bystander dilemma involves neither. Our IMD may have failed to elicit a sufficient amount of disgust to significantly affect UA in participants. Using a broader range of IMD, including those requiring direct physical force, may have elicited more IMD disgust, better capturing the effect of DP on IMD judgements. Notably, however, DPM theory suggests most people overcome emotional responses to rationalise IMDs (Greene et al., 2001). It does not suggest DP alone should predictexceptions. Thus, our findings are not entirely inconsistent with DPM theory (Greene et al., 2001). Further research would identify participants who maintain DRs to IMDs and seek to establish common features that predict, or even explain, their response. The results did not support the hypotheses that NFC would be positively associated with UA for both the (i) PMD and (ii) IMD. This is inconsistent with the DPM, which suggests that preference for effortful reasoning should predict greater deliberatively generated URs to MDs (Greene et al., 2004). However, empirical investigations have been inconclusive (Bartels, 2008; c.f. Conway &Gawronski, 2013; Kahane et al., 2012).Kahane (2012) reviewed the neurological evidence, and found it did not support greater recruitment of deliberative processing areas during URs (Kahane, 2012; Kahane et al., 2012; Tassy, et al., 2012; c.f. Greene, 2004; Paxton, Bruni, & Greene, 2014). He suggested the link between deliberative reasoning and URs is not supported, explaining the failure to clearly like NFC and UR.If URs are not associated with deliberative reasoning, DPM does not suggest any alternative link between NFC and UA (Kahane, 2012). Alternatively, inconclusive findings on the relationship between NFC and UR may suggest methodological limitations. NFC, as operationalised by the NCS, has been widely used and validated (Cacioppo, Petty, Feinstein, Jarvis,& Blair, 1996), but it measures preference for effortful engagement generally (Cacioppo et al., 1996), not moral dilemmasspecifically (Strobel, Grass,&Pohling, 2017). The emotional reactions produced by MDs may overcome or redirect this inclination such that it cannot predict UR (Conway & Gawronski, 2013). Cognitive reflection conceptualises the ability to resist appealing intuitive responses (Frederick, 2005). Faith in intuition(FI) conceptualises confidence in enjoyment following one’s intuitions (Epstein,Pacini, Denes-Raj, &Heier, 1996).NFC is moderately correlated with both (Epstein et al., 1996; Frederick, 2005). An individual high in NFC and cognitive reflection is likely to resist intuitive inclination, deliberating before responding to MDs (Paxton & Greene, 2010; Rozyman, Landy, & Leeman, 2015). An individual high in NFC and FI is likely to engage confidently and thoughtfully in post-hoc elaborations on their intuitive response (Bartels, 2008; Haidt, 2001; Petty, Briñol,Loersch, & McCaslin, 2009).Assessing all threeconcepts may better capture a different deliberative styles, and predict MD outcomes, than NFC alone (Stoble, Grass, &Pohling, 2017; Paxton and Greene, 2010). Several limitations may have affected our results. Our sample was a convenience sample, which was heavily female biased (2.95:1). Evidence suggests women exhibit stronger affective reactions to harm, despite being equally deliberative (Friesdorf, Conway, & Gawronski, 2015; Stich& Buckwalter, 2014; c.f. Thompson,Adleberg, & Nahmias, 2015;2015). FI has been found to be higher in women than men (Pacini& Epstein, 1999; Alos-Ferrer &Hügelschäfer, 2016). While maintaining NFC scores, a female biased sample would tend toward increased FI and affective reactions to harm, increasing DR. This could explain our failure to observe a significant positive correlation between UR and NFC. Additionally, before participating, students were exposed to lectures and literature on DPM theory. Kahane (2012) argues that DPM literature implicitly endorses utilitarianism as rational and preferable. This may have encouraged participants to prefer UR. Low NFC individuals have been found to rely more heavily on others’ opinions (especially experts’) to make sense of the world around them, and less likely to think critically (Cacioppo et al., 1996). It seems plausible to suggest that low NFC individuals are more likely to defer to an authority’s suggestion that URs are preferable. If low NFCs were more influenced to adopt utilitarianism, this would further distort the correlation between NFC and UR, which may explain our results. In summary, this research supported an association between DP and UA for PMDs. However, correlations between NFC and UR for both MDs, and DP and UR to IMD were not found. Future studies should randomly recruit participants and adjust for important factors including gender. Additional measures should be administeredor developed to better capture different reasoning strategies applied to MDs.A broader range of MDs ought to be utilised to elicit disgust. The characteristics of those who maintain DRs to IMDs should be investigated and the role of common characteristics closely examined for predictive association. Finally, as DP has been shown to predict URs to PMDs, the role of other traits such as anger should be explored, adding to the literature on the role of individual differences in MD outcomes. This can provide us with a more complete understanding of the mechanisms underpinning moral judgement, which can foster cohesion, respect, and understanding in our society.
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H. Hoyle (eds.),Handbook of Individual Differences in Social Behavior. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Pizarro, D., & Bloom, P. (2003). The intelligence of the moral intuitions: Comment on Haidt (2001). Psychological Review, 110(1), 193-196. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.110.1.193 Pletti, C., Lotto, L., Tasso, A., &Sarlo, M. (2016). Will I regret it? Anticipated negative emotions modulate choices in moral dilemmas. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1918-1922. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01918 Rozin P., Haidt, J., & McCauley, C. R.(2000). Disgust. In M. Lewis & J. M. Haviland-Jones (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (pp. 637-653). New York: Guilford Press. Royzman, E. B., Landy, J. F., & Leeman, R. F. (2015). Are thoughtful people more utilitarian? CRT as a unique predictor of moral minimalism in the dilemmatic context. Cognitive Science, 39(2), 325-352. Schnall, S., Haidt, J., Clore, G. L., & Jordan, A. H. (2008). Disgust as embodied moral judgment. 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Disrupting the right prefrontal cortex alters moral judgement. Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, 7(3), 282-288. doi:10.1093/scan/nst102 Thomson, J. J. (1985). The trolley problem. The Yale Law Journal, 94(6), 1395-1415. doi:10.2307/796133 Thompson, M.,Adleberg, T.,& Nahmias, E. (2014). Do men and women have different philosophical intuitions? Further data. Philosophical Psychology, 28(5),1-27. doi:10.1080/09515089.2013.878834 Wheatley, T., & Haidt, J. (2005). Hypnotic disgust makes moral judgments more severe.Psychological Science, 16(10), 780-784. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01614.x PSYC20009 Personality and Social Psychology Assignment Lab Report Handout Due date: 8am on the day of your scheduled tutorial in Week 7. To be submitted via Turnitin. Word limit: 2000 words. Weight: 40% of final mark
Please see the student manual (on LMS) for information on submission guidelines, word limits, extensions, late penalties and re-marking. It is important that you are familiar with these rules to avoid any penalties arising from these issues. We also strongly recommend that you take a screen capture after you have submitted your assignment. This is so you have proof of submission if there is a dispute about whether an assignment was submitted late.
Your assignment is to write a lab report on associations between the Big Five personality domains and the three fundamental needs associated with self-determination theory. Specifically, you are to choose 3 associations between Big Five factors and fundamental needs from a larger set (see table below). You will test these associations using correlation analyses, and then write these results up in an APA style lab report. In the week 1 tutorial and the week 2 lecture, you will be given some background theory and research on the Big Five and self-determination theory. Further, in the week 1 tutorial, you will respond to a few questionnaires that will provide the data on which the lab report will be based. You will analyse this data yourselves in the tutorial in Week 3. To help get you started, you’ll find an introduction to some background literature on the Big Five and on self-determination theory below. Keep in mind that this is only an introduction to these research areas. We expect you to seek out additional research for your lab report; assignments that rely solely on the literature suggested in this document are very unlikely to receive a high grade. Background What kinds of goals do people pursue throughout their lives? Although there are many answers to this question, self-determination theory (SDT) proposes that the goals people pursue mainly focus on the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs – autonomy, competence and relatedness. Autonomyrefers to the feelings of volition and self-ownership; of one’s behaviours originating in the self and being consistent with one’s values. The opposite of autonomy is the feeling that one’s actions are controlled by forces alien to the self. Competence refers to feeling effective, at taking on and mastering challenges. Relatedness refers to feeling connected to others and feeling a sense of belonging in groups or in one’s community. SDT suggests that to the extent that these needs are satisfied, people will feel a sense of growth and wellbeing. Most work in SDT has focused on how certain environments or situations help fulfil these needs. For example, studies have shown that high school classrooms can support the three needs and thus promote students’ engagement with learning, and consequently, lead to better learning outcomes. Despite these needs being termed ‘basic’ or ‘fundamental’, not all people experience autonomy, competence and relatedness to the same extent. Some work has been conducted investigating cross-cultural differences in satisfaction of these basic needs (e.g., Chen et al., 2015). Apart from the question of whether there is variation between cultures, another question is whether there might be variation between people – individual differences – in satisfying each of these basic needs. Your assignment will explore how individual differences in the Big Five personality domains are associated with different levels of satisfying the basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. As you will learn in the week 2 lecture, the Big Five framework in personality research suggests that there are five major dimensions of psychological and behavioural variation between people. These are Openness to Experience (O), Conscientiousness (C), Extraversion (E), Agreeableness (A), and Neuroticism (N)(acronym: OCEAN). In your assignment you will consider how these personality traits are associated with the basic needs from self-determination theory. In the first tutorial you completed a brief survey measuring the three basic needs of SDT and the Big Five (along with some additional demographic questions and SDT questions for discussion in later tutorials). More specifically, you completed the Balanced Measure of Psychological Needs (BMPN; Sheldon &Hilpert, 2012) to assess basic psychological needs from SDT and the Big Five Inventory – 2 (BFI-2; Soto & John, 2017).
Your assignment You are to choose 3 associations from among those possible between the Big Five and the basic needs. The possible associations are represented by the table below; there are a total of 15 associations (represented by each empty cell) that you can select from. Table 1. Possible associations between Big Five traits and SDT Needs
You may, for example, choose to focus on one of the Big Five domains (say, Neuroticism) and explore how it relates to each of the three fundamental needs. Or, you may want to focus on one of the needs (Autonomy, for example), and consider how a subset of three of the Big Five traits relate to it. In choosing your associations, be sure to choose a set of three that you can integrate into a coherent overall “story.” In writing your introduction, be sure to explicitly derive hypotheses about your 3 chosen associations from the background literature. For example, you may choose to focus on, among others, the association between neuroticism and competence. From your reading of the background literature, what do you expect the association to be – positive or negative? In other words, do you hypothesize neuroticism to be positively correlated with competence? Or do you hypothesize it to be negatively correlated with competence? For the purposes of this assignment, do not choose correlations that you expect to be zero. We do not want you proposing a null hypothesis (that there will be no relationship) as one of your three assignment hypotheses. We only want hypotheses where you expect to see some type of relationship between your two variables. Be sure to choose your associations before your Week 3 lab class, as you will be testing your hypotheses in that class. In doing your data analyses, you will be doing significance tests of correlations. You will also need to report reliability coefficients for the measures you use in your assignment. You will be given plenty of instruction on how to do reliability and correlation analyses in the Week 3 tutorial. Lab reports require a particular style of writing, so read the sample H1 lab reports on LMS and read short report articles in the leading journals (e.g., Journal of Experimental Social Psychology) to get a feel for the writing style. All laboratory reports must be typed rather than hand-written. The report should also conform to the format specified by the American Psychological Association, in the APA Publication Manual (6th edition). The following broad guidelines may help you write your report (see also the marking/feedback scheme as well as other resources on LMS): Your report should contain 6 sections (with an optional 7th): Abstract, Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion, References, (and Appendices, if required). In addition, you should give your report an appropriate title that describes what the report covers (for some guidance, look at some psychology journal articles). This title should be no longer than about 15 words. • The Abstract should be about 100 words and should provide a complete, self-contained summary of the report. This should include the research questions you are investigating, the method, the nature of the participants tested, the results, and conclusions. • The Introduction begins with the general area under consideration, then moves on to provide a review of the major research findings and theories that are relevant to the study. The introduction should end with the hypotheses that you have tested. In the introduction you are to derive the hypotheses from background research and theory. That is, the hypotheses should follow clearly and logically from the literature you review in the introduction. There is no minimum or maximum number of references required; you should include as many as you need to make your arguments. • The Method section should give no more and no less information than is needed to replicate the experiment. As you are describing what you did, the past tense should be used. The method should be divided into subsections that describe the Participants, Materials, and Procedure. In the Participants subsection describe who the participants were, including the number of participants, the number of males and females, the mean age, the age standard deviation, and the range. The Materials subsection includes a description of those measures used in collecting the data (including reliability coefficients). This should include the nature of any questions that were asked and how these were responded to. The Procedure subsection should contain a chronological account of what happened during the study (information relevant to this section can be found on LMS). • The Results section should provide a description of what data you analysed, how you did it, and what the results were. This should be related to the hypotheses that you presented in the Introduction. Do not include any discussion of the results in this section (i.e., do not explain the results). You may find the inclusion of Tables that present descriptive statistics, for example, means or standard deviations, useful. If you include a Table, it should be appropriately labelled (including a number) and its contents must be described in the text (see APA style guide for formatting requirements for Tables). For your assignment, hypotheses are stated in terms of predicted correlations. Thus, you need to conduct significance tests of correlations to test your hypotheses. • The crucial function of the Discussion section of the report is to review your findings and to show how they relate to the relevant literature, including the theories or models you are testing. Typically, the discussion begins with a statement of whether the hypotheses were supported or not. In the rest of the discussion you should consider what implications your findings have for extant theories, any limitations of your results (due, for example, to methodological limitations), and future directions for research. • The References section should include a full reference to each citation in your report. These should be listed alphabetically in APA format. • Appendices are included only if necessary. For laboratory reports these may be used to present copies of any questionnaires that were used. If these are included, they must be referred to in the text of the report.
Here are some references to get you started on thinking about how the Big Five might relate to the basic needs outlined in SDT; you will be expected to go beyond these in writing your lab report. These will be available on LMS.
Big Five These articles will give you a good general introduction to the Big Five framework (you will also get a further intro to this framework in the week 2 lecture): Anglim, J. & O’Conner, P. J. (2018/in press). Measurement and research using the Big Five, HEXACO, and narrow traits: A primer for researchers and practitioners. Australian Journal of Psychology. John, O.P. and Srivastava, S. (1999) The Big Five Trait Taxonomy: History, Measurement, and Theoretical Perspectives. In: Pervin, L.A. and John, O.P. Eds., Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research, Vol. 2, Guilford Press, New York, 102-138. This article will give you a sense of the kinds of things that the Big Five domains are associated with. This will help you think through which associations you might choose to examine in your assignment: Roberts, B. W., Kuncel, N. R., Shiner, R., Caspi, A. & Goldberg, L. R. (2007). The Power of Personality: The Comparative Validity of Personality Traits, Socioeconomic Status, and Cognitive Ability for Predicting Important Life Outcomes. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2(4), 313-345 This article will give you some more information about the particular measure of the Big Five we’ll be using in the assignment: the BFI-2: Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (2017). The next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and assessing a hierarchical model with 15 facets to enhance bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113, 117-143.
Self-determination theory (SDT) is a complex theory consisting of multiple lower-level, more specific sub-theories. We’ll be focusing on the Basic Psychological Needs Theory (BPNT), which is a sub-theory of SDT. A very good general introduction to SDT and its component sub-theories can be found on the SDT website here: http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/theory/ For an introduction to the key ideas behind the basic psychological needs sub-theory, this article, although long and rather complex in parts, will provide you with a good starting point: Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “What” and “Why” of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227-268. This paper provides an elaboration of the BPNT and a description of the measure we’ll be using in the assignment: Sheldon, K. M., &Hippert, J. C. (2012). The balanced measure of psychological needs (BMPN) scale: An alternative domain general measure of need satisfaction. Motivation and Emotion, 36, 439-451.
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